Kylo catching up to Anakin — Star Wars baby names for Fathers Day 2019

Once again, Happy Father's Day!   As I promised on Mother's Day and repeated earlier today, "I'm saving Star Wars names for Father's Day.  Stay tuned."

I begin by quoting what I wrote in Baby names from entertainment for Mother's Day 2018.

Unfortunately for Kylo, which was the name that increased the most in popularity in 2016, it was the name that dropped the second most in popularity in 2017, 245 places from 904th to 1149th.  The character's real name, Ben, fell 26 places to 729th place.  To add insult to injury, the actor's name, Adam, also fell two places to 77th.  On the other hand, Rey as a male name increased in popularity 99 places from to 769th.  As a female name, it didn't crack the top 1000.  The actress's name, Daisy, also became more popular, rising 20 places to 170th.  Leia also continues to rise in popularity, rising 43 places to reach 279th.  Oh, and Finn climbed eight places to 167th.  I take all these as signs that the Light Side is prevailing over the Dark.

The ultimate fate of Kylo Ren the character will not be determined until "Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker" is released in December, but Business Insider reported that the name is making a comeback.

The name Kylo also rose rapidly in popularity for boys, which appears to be inspired by the "Star Wars" villain Kylo Ren, played by actor Adam Driver in the reboot of the series.

Here's the graph showing Kylo returning to the top ten.


It had the eighth highest increase in popularity, rising 287 places from 1152 to 865, even higher than it ranked two years ago.  Kylo is catching up to Anakin, which fell 89 places from 739 to 828.  The character's real name, Ben, also improved its popularity, moving up 38 places from 730 to 692, also higher than it was two years ago.  Speaking of real names, the actor's name, Adam, fell just one place from 77 to 78th.

On the light side, Rey as a boy's name continued its climb, rising 21 places from 772 to 751.  As a female name, it once again failed to crack the top 100.  Luke rose just one spot from 30 to 29.  So did Finn, from 166 to 167.  On the other hand, Leia fell 14 places from 282 to 296.  The Light Side is catching up to the Dark Side, at least in popularity among baby names last year.

By the way, it's not just human babies being named after Star Wars characters.  ABC 6 in Philadelphia reported in January Missouri zoo names baby otters after Star Wars characters.

The Kansas City Zoo's names for three baby otters have fans joining the light side, including one well-known "Star Wars" alumnus. The Kansas City Star reports that the Asian small-clawed otter triplets born last October have been dubbed Han, Luke and Leia. The otters were introduced to zoo-goers for the first time on Friday.

May The Force be with all newborns given Star Wars names this past year, including the otters.

U.S. birth and fertility rates continue falling and setting record lows for Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!  Just as I did last year, I am "writing about the lower birth rate for Father's Day, even though that is usually considered a concern of mothers.*

Just like last year, the birth rate hit another record low, as CBS News reported last month.

America's baby bust isn't over. The nation's birth rates last year reached record lows for women in their teens and 20s, a government report shows, leading to the fewest babies in 32 years. The provisional report, released Wednesday and based on more than 99% of U.S. birth records, found 3.788 million births last year. It was the fourth year the number of births has fallen, the lowest since 1986 and a surprise to some experts given the improving economy.

Gizmodo included even more facts in its article on the subject.

[T]he national birthrate, measured as the number of births per every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 to 44, also took a drop for the fourth year in a row. Overall, the country hasn’t seen this few births since 1986.
...
There’s also been a continuing decline in the fertility rate, defined as the number of children a woman has over her lifetime. In 2018, the rate was 1.72 births per every woman, a decline from 1.76 births in 2017. Experts consider a rate of 2.1 births to be a baseline for ensuring that younger generations can continue to replace the aging population with no problems, a threshold the U.S. has consistently failed to meet for a decade.

I found the CBS News report, while good on the facts, short on analysis.  That's not the case with the following clip from KSNT News from Topeka, Kansas, Report shows U.S birth rate is declining.


In addition to the reasons for the declines among most age groups and increases among older women, the expert from the Cleveland Clinic connects the increase in premature births to the trend towards delayed childbirth.  That's decent analysis of the data.  Still, it misses some of the economic dimensions of both the causes and effects of lower birth and fertility rates.  For those, I turn to Gizmodo.

But there are likely other worrying things that are making pregnancies among women in their 20s less common, namely the lingering after-effects of the Great Recession. Research has consistently linked a struggling economy to fewer births, and in the U.S., this latest decline began in 2008, when the recession hit.

While some people’s financial fortunes (mostly the rich) have since recovered and the economy as a whole is considered healthy, it’s people in their 20s who are often still struggling to stay afloat. And this financial stranglehold is clearly affecting some young adults’ plans for parenthood. A 2018 survey commissioned by the New York Times, for instance, found that nearly two-thirds of adults cited the expenses of child care as a reason for not having children. In fact, it was the most commonly-cited reason.

I first made this point in Next Media Animation thinks low birth rates in the U.S. and China aren't all good eight years ago.  I expected that as the economy improved, birth rates would pick up.  That hasn't happened.

Gizmodo also analyzes the possible effect of lower fertility rates.

Again, as with the birth rate, this isn’t necessarily a doomsday scenario. Many similarly wealthy countries, such as Canada, have rates even lower than that. In some ways, a lower fertility rate could be viewed as a sign that an industrialized country is doing relatively well. It can mean, as mentioned above, that more women have the reproductive freedom to have (or not have) children at their choosing. The closer the birth rate becomes to that of countries like Greece and Japan, though, the more trouble that could spell in the future, with a growing aging population that can strain a country’s resources and labor shortages.

That's a concern elsewhere as well, as France 24 English reported in Drop in world fertility rates leading to 'baby bust' last year.

Women are having fewer babies in developed countries. That's the conclusion of a new global report that warns the current population in some of the world's wealthiest nations can't be maintained at the current birth rate.

I'm ambivalent about this development, as I wrote last year.

I have been in favor of zero population growth for as long as I can remember.  However, I'm not sure the U.S. economy is set up for a stable or slowly declining population, a point I made in the Hipcrime Vocab: Why Slowing Population Growth is a Problem.  We are going to have to figure how to do so.  Otherwise, I might live long enough to experience the wisdom of the saying "Be careful what you wish for; you might get it."

I repeated a similar sentiment in my comment on Going South at Kunstler's blog last month.

It always struck me as odd that, if the economy is supposedly so good with a 50-year low unemployment rate, U.S. birth and fertility rates are falling and the fertility rate is at a record low.  The answer is that, as our host pointed out, the economy isn't actually that good because it's unequally distributed.  On the one hand, it's leading us (as in the U.S.) to do our part to slow the growth of population and affluence, the P and A in I (impact) = P * A * T, where T is technology, which ideally could counteract the effects of the other two variables.  On the other, I and other advocates of zero population growth should be careful what we wish for.  We might not like how we get it.

That includes accepting more immigrants to counteract lower population growth and stagnant or shrinking economies.  I'm O.K. with that, but Trump is in office in large part because many Americans are not.

Enough finding a dark lining in a silver cloud.  It's Sunday, so it's time for an entertainment feature.  As I promised on Mother's Day, "I'm saving Star Wars names for Father's Day.  Stay tuned."

*That written, there are "Men Going Their Own Way" (MGTOW) types who are allies of the men's rights advocates (MRAs) that I criticized in Recycled comments about the men's rights movement that are cheering this development in the comments to the videos I posted because it means men are avoiding marriage, fatherhood, and child rearing and support.  They're not entirely wrong factually, although I think they are wrong morally as well as giving themselves and men in general too much credit.

OnTheIssues.org's take on the Democratic presidential candidates from left to center

I concluded Democratic presidential candidates from left to center from Voteview with a promise to revisit the topic.

[T]his won't be the last time I plan on examining the ideology of the candidates.  On The Issues has pages and ideological evaluations of just about all the candidates, including ones who never served in Congress.  Compared to Voteview, it's more complete, but less objective and based on rhetoric, not action....Still, ranking the candidates by ideology, and comparing it to their DW-NOMINATE scores, if available, should be both entertaining and informative.

Since the participants in the debates later this month have been selected, it's time to follow through.

As I did for the rankings using Voteview, I'm sharing the methodology.

Candidate's Political Philosophy
The below is a way of thinking about the candidate's political philosophy by dividing the candidate's VoteMatch answers into "social" and "economic" questions.  It is only a theory - please take it with a grain of salt!

Social Questions:  Liberals and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government answers, while conservatives and populists agree in choosing the more-restrictive answers.

Economic Questions:  Conservatives and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government answers, while liberals and populists agree in choosing the more-restrictive answers.
...
Social Score

This measures how much the candidate believes government should intervene in people's personal lives or on social issues. These issues include health, morality, love, recreation, prayer and other activities that are not measured in dollars.

• A high score (above 60%) means the candidate believes in tolerance for different people and lifestyles.
• A low score (below 40%) means the candidate believes that standards of morality & safety should be enforced by government.

Economic Score

This measures how much the candidate believes government should intervene in people's economic lives. Economic issues include retirement funding, budget allocations, and taxes.

• A high score (above 60%) means the candidate believes in personal responsibility for financial matters, and that free-market competition is better for people than central planning by the government.
• A low score (below 40%) means the candidate believes that a good society is best achieved by the government redistributing wealth. The candidate believes that government's purpose is to decide which programs are good for society, and how much should be spent on each program.

This measures how much the candidate believes government should intervene in people's economic lives. Economic issues include retirement funding, budget allocations, and taxes.

How We Score Candidates

How we determine a candidate's stance on each VoteMatch question:

1. We collect up votes, excerpts from speeches, press releases, and so on, which are related to each question. Each of these are shown on the candidate's VoteMatch table.
2. We assign an individual score for each item on the list. The scores can be: Strongly Favor, Favor, Neutral/Mixed, Oppose, Strongly Oppose. The scoring terms refer to the text of the question, not whether the candidate strongly opposed a bill, for example.
3. We then average the individual scores, using the numeric scale: Strongly Favor = 2, Favor = 1, Neutral/Mixed = 0, Oppose = -1, Strongly Oppose = -2.
/OL>
• If the average is above 1, the overall answer to the question is Strongly Favor.
• If the average is above 0, the overall answer to the question is Favor.
• If the average is exactly 0, the overall answer to the question is Neutral.
• If the average is below 0, the overall answer to the question is Oppose.
• If the average is below -1, the overall answer to the question is Strongly Oppose.
...
• To get the political philosophy of the candidate, we sum up the answers on two scales, the Personal/Social scale and the Economic Scale. Some questions aren't used in the political philosophy calculations.
• The VoteMatch table indicates the number of scale points from each answer (any one question can provide from 0 to 10 scale points on one scale or the other).
• The combination of social/moral scales and economic scales produces a political philosophy description.

Enough of On The Issues' methodology.  Mine was to rank the candidates by economic score from low (left) to high (right, or in this case center) to make it comparable to the liberal-moderate (there are no true conservatives running for the Democratic nomination) ranking I used two weeks ago which was based on the economic dimension.  I then used the social score to break ties in the economic score with high scores being considered more liberal and low scores being considered more conservative.

Follow over the jump for the rankings.

All charges dismissed without prejudice against defendants in Flint Water Crisis cases

I told my readers to "stay tuned" at the conclusion of  as I promised to "write about the latest news about the Michigan Attorney General's prosecutions in the Flint Water Crisis."  The cases took a shocking turn as MLive reported this morning State drops criminal charges in Flint water cases.

Eight remaining Flint water prosecutions have been dismissed by the Department of Attorney General, officials said Thursday, June 13, 2019. Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym L. Worthy issued a statement saying the cases are being dismissed without prejudice -- meaning they could be refiled -- in order to conduct a full and complete investigation, a shocking conclusion to the high-profile criminal prosecutions.

This video presented the headlines and facts, although I think its interpretation that this is the conclusion of the case is premature.  WXYZ had the reactions from officials and people on the street in its two videos, beginning with last night's Flint Water Crisis: Charges Dropped.


WXYZ captured the desire for justice from both expert observers and the people affected, which included the possibility that charges will likely be refiled and the resulting cases will be stronger.

Similar reactions from new interviewees and more, including an indignant one from one of the activists in Flint, appeared in this morning's Michigan AG's office drops Flint Water Crisis charges, pending further investigation.

The Michigan Attorney General's office announced Thursday that they have dismissed all pending criminal cases connected to the Flint Water Crisis that were brought by the former Office of Special Counsel.

The quote from Former Attorney General Bill Schuette reminds me that I was very cynical about how he handled this case and still think Dana Nessel's more direct approach is a necessary improvement.

Speaking of Nessel, her office was quoted by Fox 47 in Investigators to Hold Town Hall in Flint.

The attorney general says her office will not respond further on the investigation until prosecutors speak directly to the people of Flint.

I'm looking forward to hearing and reading more on this investigation at the end of the month.  Until then, this news just reinforces my observation that "The wheels of justice are grinding slowly in this case, but I expect they will indeed grind exceedingly fine."  If anything, they're grinding even slower than I expected, but also much finer.

In the meantime, stay tuned for my follow up Democratic presidential candidates from left to center from Voteview tomorrow.

WUSA on D.C. statehood for a 51st or 52nd star on Flag Day

Happy Flag Day!  Two years ago, I observed the holiday with A 51st star for Puerto Rico on Flag Day.  That kicked off a series of popular posts that I chronicled in Samantha Bee helps update 'Vox on Puerto Rico statehood and John Oliver on territories,' the fourth most read entry of the seventh year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News last year, which included John Oliver on D.C. Statehood, and Another bill introduced to admit Puerto Rico as a state, an update on Puerto Rico statehood for the eighth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News this year, in fact, last month.  For this year's celebration, I'm giving the District of Columbia its time in the spotlight, as WUSA reported last month DC statehood to have its first hearing this summer.



A vote is expected July 24.
That's good news for the residents of the nation's capital.  However, it may not come to pass because of opposition in the Senate and the possibility that it might take a constitutional amendment to allow it to become a state.  WUSA had a debate of sorts about those very issues earlier this month, beginning with Rep. Jamie Raskin: Puerto Rico could be key to DC getting statehood.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) says including DC and Puerto Rico should both become states.

I'll return to Raskin's proposal after the next segment, 'This is historic' Delegate Norton discusses path forward for DC statehood, where she continues the debate with Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, who pours cold water on the idea.

House Majority Leader and Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer joined DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton in the fight for DC Statehood today. He officially signed on as a co-sponsor for HR-51 which would make DC the 51st state and give residents a vote in Congress. Delegate Norton and Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute go Off Script on the chances of statehood becoming a reality.

I'm on the side of Raskin, Hoyer, and Norton, as I think the residents of Washington, D.C. deserve equal self-government.  I'm sure that Pilon is right about how the federal district is governed and am afraid that he might also be right about the majority of Americans or at least their elected representatives may not be in favor of shrinking the district to make a state possible.  Sigh.

Follow over the jump for more on Raskin's proposal that Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico be admitted together.

Vox explains the Green New Deal plus building a sea wall on Staten Island to prepare for climate change

The last time I examined the Green New Deal, I shared Vox explaining how coverage of the Green New Deal informed people more about the politics of the idea than about its substance, something the video I embedded contributed to.  Today, Vox actually describes the substance of the proposal in The Green New Deal, explained.

What's actually in the Green New Deal?
...
The Green New Deal is an ambitious plan to fight the effects of climate change. It’s the only American plan that actually acknowledges the size of the impending crisis. And it contains some difficult truths that we might not want to hear.

Vox has more here.

When I first read about all of the social programs in the Green New Deal, I thought "that's nice and I'm in favor of them, but what do they have to do with fighting climate change?"  This video is the first time I've heard that they are there to mitigate all of the economic disruption that will happen in a rapid radical restructuring of the U.S. economy as a result of decarbonization while still maintaining as much of our First World way of life as possible.  Now I understand why the Green New Deal includes them, so I'm even more in favor of them.

If the U.S. doesn't decarbonize its economy and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then we will have to prepare for the 400 ppm world we are creating, which will also be expensive.  Vox in partnership with one of its sister sites Curbed has a video about one of the projects for that future that is already being planned, New York is building a wall to hold back the ocean.

Climate change is leading to increasingly violent storms. Can seawalls hold back floods?
...
Staten Island recently received funding for a nearly 5-mile-long seawall to protect its coast. But the plan raises a lot of questions. We’re living in a dangerously dynamic world: Hurricanes are getting worse, wildfires are rampant in California, extreme heat is melting roads in India, and sea levels continue to rise. Will a wall really be enough to protect our coastal cities?

Alissa Walker from Curbed talked to us about how it’s too late to stop the changing climate, but not too late to change how we think about infrastructure.

In reality, we will have to do both, decarbonizing our economy and preparing for all the changes that will be coming because of all the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases humanity has already pumped into the atmosphere.  I hope we're up for the challenge.  We have to be.

'Free Trip to Egypt' and #PledgeToListen Day of Unity tonight, an invitation on behalf of Coffee Party USA

As a director of Coffee Party USA, I invite my readers to participate in one of our partner events, the #PledgeToListen Day of Unity screening of the documentary "Free Trip to Egypt."  I'll let the film's creator Tarek Mounib explain.

Friend,

I had an idea - to bring together two peoples of different cultures, try to connect in kindness instead of fear, and document the experience in a film. Joining forces with Adam Saleh, an American Muslim YouTube celebrity and comedian to lighten the trip, I set out across America searching for potential travelers with different backgrounds, beliefs and opinions. The group of daring, open-minded Americans who came to Egypt explored the real land, people, and ways of life beyond the media images. What happened on our journey exceeded even my greatest hopes for this project.

On June 12, I am excited to share this project with you! The film, Free Trip to Egypt, is a remarkable cinematic sojourn of revelation and self-discovery for the participants, the filmmakers, and the viewer alike.

The film will be shown in 500 Theaters across the United States on June 12th, 2019 and will be immediately followed by a live panel discussion streamed into the theater from Washington DC.

Find a theater near you!

But we don't want to stop there! The film created a desire to bring more listening to the world and #PledgeToListen was born.

Here's the #PledgeToListen.

I pledge to listen to you. Will you listen to me?

I pledge not to demonize anyone who holds certain opinions, views or beliefs, but instead will try to understand their reasons and their arguments and express my own views in return. That’s it.

Here's the trailer.

On June 12th, join us for a nationwide, one-day-only, screening of the film Free Trip to Egypt across 500 theatres in the United States and join the #PledgeToListen Day of Unity.

I close with this excerpt from a review in The Hollywood Reporter.

It should be eye-rollingly obvious to point out that, wherever one goes in the world, there are friendly, welcoming people to meet. Obvious, anyway, to people whose knowledge of the outside world doesn't come mostly from xenophobes. Gently observing how many of our fellow Americans are full of fear while trying, in its tiny way, to do something about that, Ingrid Serban's Free Trip to Egypt offers just that to a handful of travelers. Focusing on the warm connections these nervous Americans made while touching gingerly on moments of mild conflict, the doc is best suited to viewers like the people onscreen: men and women of goodwill who just need to meet some Arabs in person. How many such people will seek the film out is an open question, but a collection of celebrities including filmmakers, politicians and an ex-wife of Donald Trump have rallied behind a June 12 nationwide Fathom event to spread the word.

Tarek Mounib, who says he grew up as the only Muslim kid in Halifax, recalls having the idea for this project while working in Switzerland. That's nearly all we learn about a man described vaguely in press releases as an entrepreneur; judging from his early efforts to make the scheme a reality, consciousness-raising tourism is not his field of expertise.
...
To a person, Tarek's beneficiaries come home feeling changed by the experience. Unfortunately, he and Serban aren't so gauche as to ask if they've reevaluated any political stances as a result; the film is content with the unspoken assumption that this expanded awareness of shared humanity will make the world better. If only someone had the budget to send tens of millions of other frightened Westerners on similar trips.

Coffee Party USA and I don't have that budget, but we can suggest that people watch the film, which we also hope will make the world a better place.

Justin Amash quits Freedom Caucus amidst call for impeachment

Much to my surprise, I've never mentioned U.S. Representative Justin Amash on this blog before.  That ends today, as ABC 13 in Grand Rapids reported this morning Amash leaves House Freedom Caucus in wake of impeachment talk.

The decision to step down from the conservative group that he started back in 2015 was because he didn't want to be a "further distraction." Justin Amash is still dealing with the aftereffects of saying Trump committed "impeachable conduct" as laid out in the Mueller report.

Yes, Amash is the first Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives to call for impeachment, which the following video from Bloomberg pointed out three weeks ago.

Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a libertarian who’s often at odds with most other congressional Republicans, said Donald Trump has engaged in “impeachable conduct,” drawing a rebuke from the president as a “total lightweight.”

Amash said on Twitter Saturday that he’s concluded -- after reading Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted 448-page report -- that Attorney General William Barr “deliberately misrepresented” the findings using “sleight-of-hand qualifications or logical fallacies.”

“Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” said Amash, 39, who arrived in Congress as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010.

Amash’s manifesto-like string of more than a dozen tweets stopped short of actually calling for Trump’s impeachment.

The Bloomberg video noted that this isn't the first time Amash has defied Trump, citing two votes he cast against Trump's policies.  In fact, Amash has been the most likely Republican to support impeachment, as CBS News reported two years ago GOP congressman among first to say Trump impeachment possible.

Congressman Justin Amash, R-Michigan, said Wednesday that if true, Trump's allegations regarding former FBI Director James Comey are grounds for impeachment.

That was on May 17, 2017, just about two years to the day before Amash tweeted that Trump had engaged in impeachable conduct.  Anyone who was surprised that Amash would be in favor of impeachment has not been paying attention.

Finally, the man has principles.  I may not agree with them, but I'm glad he has them and sticks to them.

Andrew Yang links universal basic income to automation and the Retail Apocalypse on 'Real Time'

Just as Jay Inslee made climate change his signature issue, Andrew Yang has made universal basic income (UBI) his.  It's a science-fiction solution to a science-fiction problem, automation taking human jobs.  No surprise, I like it.

He was on "Real Time with Bill Maher" last week and made his case for it.  Watch his interview and listen to his argument.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang joins Bill to discuss his vision for America.

I really appreciated how he connected America's dying malls closing to Amazon's outcompeting brick-and-mortar retailers, in large part because of automating its warehouses.  It put the Retail Apocalypse in a larger perspective than just Amazon's dominance in online shopping picking off weak players like Sears, Kmart, and JCPenney.  I'm glad he's thinking about the issue that deeply.

I plan on writing more about Yang and the other Democratic presidential candidates when I follow up on Democratic presidential candidates from left to center from Voteview.  Yang has never held elected office, let alone served in Congress, so he doesn't have a Voteview score, but he does have a page at OnTheIssues.org and I will use that site to arrange the Democratic contenders from left to center in a future entry.  Stay tuned.

James Corden a big winner among political nominees at tonight's Critics' Choice Real TV Awards

The big awards show tonight is the Tony Awards, the T in EGOT.  Even though there are political and fantastic nominees, "The Ferryman" about The Troubles in Northern Ireland and "Hillary and Clinton" — self-explanatory  — for the former and "Hadestown" for the latter, I'm just not feeling like writing about them.  Instead, for this week's Sunday entertainment feature, I feel like blogging about the Critics' Choice Real TV Awards, which are airing on VH1 tonight at 11:00 P.M. EDT.  This isn't the first time I've made a choice like this; I made a similar decision in 2015, writing about the
Critics' Choice TV Awards winners for speculative fiction.

Even though people think of reality TV as frivolous, a lot of the categories are for documentaries and talk shows; all that matters is that they are not scripted fiction.  Therefore, they can be quite serious, even as they are being entertaining.  On that note, I begin with a category that is about government, not politics.  The winner has already been chosen, even though the show has not yet aired, and is marked with double asterisks.  I hope I'm not spoiling too much.

Crime/Justice Show

Betrayed (ID)
**Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (Netflix)
In Pursuit with John Walsh (ID)
Making a Murderer: Part 2 (Netflix)
The Innocent Man (Netflix)

"Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" has another nomination, but not in the next category, which is more political.

Ongoing Documentary Series

Chef’s Table (Netflix)
**POV (PBS)
The Circus: Inside the Wildest Political Show on Earth (Showtime)
United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell (CNN)
Vice (HBO)

Other than "Chef's Table," all of these series cover politics and government.  I'm not surprised "POV" won, as I've written about it in 'Abacus,' 'Edith and Eddie,' 'Heroin(e),' and 'Last Men in Aleppo' — Oscar nominees at the 2018 News and Documentary Emmy Awards and 'Dark Money,' 'Hitler's Hollywood' and 'RBG' lead Best Political Documentary nominees at the 2018 Critics' Choice Documentary Awards.  The latter shows that the Broadcast Television Journalists Association knows the series.  Congratulations!

Now for the other nomination for "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes."

Limited Documentary Series

Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (Netflix)
Our Planet (Netflix)
Punk (Epix)
Shut Up and Dribble (Showtime)
**Surviving R. Kelly (Lifetime)

I picked "Surviving R. Kelly" as the likely winner of Best Documentary at the MTV Movie and TV Awards, so I'm not surprised it won here, although I would have been rooting for "Our Planet."*  It's nice to know that the critics liked the show as much as I think the fans voting at MTV.com have.  That written, I'm saving my congratulations until next week, when I expect "Surviving R. Kelly" will pick up the golden popcorn container.

Now for a category that is only incidentally political.

Short Form Series

9 Months with Courteney Cox (Facebook Watch)
Biography Presents: History, Herstory (HISTORY)
**Carpool Karaoke: The Series (Apple TV)
Comeback Kids (The Dodo)
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: Between the Scenes (Comedy Central)

James Corden can add this trophy to his three Emmy Awards he won last fall, one of which is for "Carpool Karaoke: The Series."  Personally, I'd have been rooting for Trevor Noah.

I am saving my congratulations for now, as Corden won two more awards, the first of which I will get to after the next category.

Talk Show

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Netflix)
**My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (Netflix)
Red Table Talk (Facebook Watch)
The Ellen DeGeneres Show (Warner Bros. Television/Syndicated)
The View (ABC)

Congratulations to David Letterman.  He did better here than he did at last year's Emmy Awards, where I wrote he should just be happy to be nominated.  This time, I'm happy to say "Congratulations!"

Now for Corden's second award.

Late-Night Talk Show (TIE)

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS)
**Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Comedy Central)
**The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS)
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS)

I would have been rooting for John Oliver, as his show has many Emmy Awards, so I'm glad he shared the award.  Congratulations!  However, I'm surprised it was Cordens's show that tied.  If I had been forecasting a tie, which I wouldn't have, I'd have picked one of the other three nominees, as Corden's show is the least to my taste.  However, the critics are looking at factors I'm not, such as general entertainment value and creativity, so I'm not terribly surprised.

I conclude with Corden's final award.

Show Host

RuPaul Charles – RuPaul’s Drag Race (VH1)
Stephen Colbert – The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS)
**James Corden – The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS)
Busy Philipps – Busy Tonight (E!)
Jerry Seinfeld – Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Netflix)

I'd have been rooting for RuPaul Charles, who won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Best Host, but that was against hosts of other reality shows, not variety talk shows.  My second choice would have been Stephen Colbert.  Still, I think Corden is a worthy winner, so congratulations three times over!  To sum up his victories, I am sharing the relevant paragraph about his wins from IndieWire.

“The Late Late Show with James Corden” also earned multiple awards, for both Late-Night Talk Show (a tie with “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”) and Show Host for Corden, whose “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” won the Short Form Series category, sending the Brit home with three awards total.

The only show that won more awards was “Queer Eye,” which led all winners with four awards, Ensemble Cast in an Unscripted Series, Lifestyle Show: Fashion/Beauty, Male Star of The Year for Jonathan Van Ness, and Structured Series.  Congratulations!

Since I like completing a circle by going back to the first topic I mentioned, Corden is the host of tonight's Tony Awards, so he gets to be on two awards shows on the same night.  Ah, the wonders of tape delay!

*That's O.K.  "Our Planet" won Animal/Nature Show, which is what I would have wanted.